Would you even know if you were in burnout? with Carole Jean Whittington

What's the difference between being a little bit frazzled and needing just five minutes without anybody asking you questions to get back to equilibrium, and being in burnout?  

 My guest today is Carole Jean Whittington. She's a wellness trailblazer, and she specializes in burnout research and restoration for neurodivergent and disabled adults.  Her three-year global research led to the Whittington Burnout Inventory, offering insight into burnout. Her acclaimed talk show "Beyond Chronic Burnout" reaches 96 countries with over 550,000 listeners. And she's the author of "Unleashing Sustainable Energy".  

Carole Jean guides individuals in mastering energy with science-backed methods. She fosters innovation and connection.  And she wants to beat burnout with relentless passion and boundless spirit.  

Carole Jean is a master storyteller, and today you'll get to hear her story of how she discovered that she had autism and ADHD, her instinct to put others' needs before her own until her body wouldn't let her anymore. And how she went from feeling completely useless, to approaching her body like a science experiment and taking the time to rediscover who she was.  

Carole Jean is passionate about helping people make their way out of burnout.
You'll also hear:
 -  how people running socially conscious businesses are likely to feel like they're headed towards burnout. 
 - how to recognize when you're in burnout and what stage you're in. 
 -  the research that Carole Jean is doing into burnout and how it manifests.

Have a listen, and then head straight over and take Carole Jean's Spicy Pepper Level Burnout Quiz.

Find Carole on her website
Reach out on LinkedIn

Looking for more?

Join The Soap Box Community - Peta's membership for businesses with a social conscience is now FREE! Come and join us to survive the current torrid political context!

Follow Peta on Instagram
Find Peta on LinkedIn

Hire Peta to work on your copywriting and brand messaging

Transcript

Most of us. Uh, let's face it. And little frazzled.  

We're running businesses where might be running families, caring responsibilities. We have jobs. We have children, we have laundry. We have the constant need to remember 157 different passwords. , in order to get into.  Anything that runs our lives.  

But what's the difference between being a little bit frazzled?  , and needing. I don't know. Uh, run above. , five minutes without anybody asking you questions.  In order to kind of get back to that equilibrium.  And being in burnout.  

 My guest today is Carol Jean Whittington. She's a wellness trailblazer, and she specializes in burnout research and restoration for neurodivergent and disabled adults.  The three-year global research led to the Whittington burnout  inventory.  Offering insight into burnout.  , her acclaimed talk show beyond chronic burnout reaches 96 countries with over 550,000 listeners. And she's the author of unleashing sustainable energy.  Carol Jean guides, individuals in mastering energy with science-backed methods. 

She fosters innovation and connection.  And she wants to meet burnout history with relentless passion and boundless spirit.  And I can testify to both of those things. Having talked to Carol Jean on the soap box podcast this week.  

Carol is an incredible master storyteller.,  and today 

You'll get to hear her story of how she discovered. That she had autism and ADHD.  Her instinct to put others needs before her own, until her body wouldn't let her anymore. And how she went from feeling completely useless. To approaching her body like a science experiment. And taking the time to rediscover who she was.  



Carol Dean is passionate about helping people make their way out of burnout. 

And we talk about a whole bunch of interesting, valuable things in today's conversation.  We talk about what our nourishment keys are, the things that help us manage our stress.  

We talk about how people running socially conscious businesses are likely to feel like they're headed towards burnout.  

We talk about how to recognize when you're in burnout and what stage you're in.  And I introduce you to cowl jeans. Brilliant, , spicy pepper level burnout quiz.  

We talk about the research that Carol Jean is doing. Into burnout and how it manifests. ,  And we talk about how you can start to make your way out of. Once you've realized that you're there.   What little rules are you putting around? The things that no issues so that you get those needs met in your life and you're feeling good and energized. , how you get to a place where you can make joyful and intentional decisions, , from your own power that help you live your life in a way. That you want to live it.  



I would urge you all to listen to this conversation and then head straight over to Whittington wellbeing.com and take care of genes, spicy pepper level burnout quiz. , so that you can. Work out, whether you do just need. A cup of tea and a quiet five minutes. , Or weather.  Carol Jean might be able to help you that a little bit more. 

So while you are folding the washing stirring, the pastor. Four. Fielding 567 requests for snacks.  Have listened to the podcast.   And Carol Jean get on her soapbox. 

 Carol Jean, thank you so much for coming on the soapbox and talking with us. I'm really excited to chat with you and I'm really excited for my audience to hear about you and your story and the wonderful things that you do. 

Thanks so much for having me, Pat. I'm really excited to be here and I love, uh, I love getting on my soapbox. So

Yes, that's excellent news.  So for people , who haven't met you, haven't found you online, , can you give us a little bit of a rundown on who you are, what you do and kind of how you got to where you are right now? Tell us your story. 

my friends, my dear friends call me the bumblebee tornado,  which I think is pretty darn accurate. , my name is Carol Jean Whittington. I am the founder and lead burnout researcher at Whittington wellbeing. And that came about after 40 years of living in the burnout world.  chronic burnout cycle beginning at the age of six.

I am a late identified autistic ADHD adult. So until I was almost 40, I only knew mid twenties that I had ADHD and that made sense. It answered some of the questions, but it didn't answer quite all of the questions. So I just kept quote unquote pushing through thinking that I needed to work harder. I needed to figure it out.

Somehow I just didn't get the rule book. I couldn't figure things out as efficiently or effectively as other people.  So when I was almost turning 40, going through the autism diagnosis process with my eldest son, this darling little neuropsychologist  And his little blue sport coat and his little half glasses and his salt and pepper hair was going through the results for my child and saying, you know, these are the places that he really excels.

These are the places where he's struggling and these are some things you can do. And he pauses, slides his little glasses down, looks at me, points his finger and says, you know, you were missed.  And I looked at him and in my very black and white, literal thinking brain at the time, it was hardcore locked in black and white, like very literal.

So this, there was no gray and there's no interpretation and I simply went,  no, no one missed me. I'm right here.  He just kind of smiles,  probably thinking I'm from the deep South. So probably thinking, bless her heart.  And pushes his glasses up and continues with the story. The results of my son's information  about 10 or 15 minutes into the conversation, the penny dropped us, they say,  and it hit me what he meant.

And I went, hang on, hold up a minute. And  he stops. Yes, ma'am. I said, are you saying I'm autistic?  And he smiles and he said, you really should make an appointment at the desk on your way out. 

And that began this really beautiful journey. And you would think that I would take that information about myself and go crazy, like figure it all out. Like, yes, I finally have an answer. No,  no, why would I do that? That was not, no, of course not. Took me two years, but there was a reason I didn't get to myself and really start asking the question.

What does it mean for me to be autistic? Uh, how does this show up in my life? What's important to me to discovering? What is this element of me? Right. Cause we're beautiful diamonds. We all have facets. I believe in that. I think we're all sparkly. Um,  But I was so  hit by the fact that as I sat there and I thought,  if I'm autistic  and my son has been identified as autistic and I know  how much I've struggled, how hard everything has been for me in so many ways.

and how horrible I felt not knowing this. I want to make sure that he doesn't have the same struggles. He may have his own set of new struggles, but I want to make sure he doesn't have the struggles that I had. If I can prevent them, if there's something that I can do to make this more easeful  for him. 

And so for two years, I poured myself into everything that needed to get done. You know, driving to occupational therapy, integrated listening, and all of these wonderful things. And we were very, very fortunate that this neuropsychologist  was  very aware and very neuro affirming even, you know,  a decade over a decade ago, which is pretty big.

Um, and he did not suggest  ABA therapy. Thank goodness applied behavioral analytics. So.  We didn't have that, thank goodness. Um, because I didn't know, I wouldn't have known any different at the time. I would have done it, thinking this was what I was supposed to do. And I think a lot of parents do that. But it is truly very harmful to autistic people. 

And so at the end of that two year period, roughly about two years, I hit one of the worst burnouts of my life. Cause I've been pushing through and making sure everybody else had what they needed, all of the things.  And I hit a burnout that was so bad. My body started to shut down  and I became completely bedridden.

I couldn't even lift my arm to feed myself.  And at that point,  I have lots of co occurring health conditions. I'm a trifecta patient. I have POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. I have hypermobility. Some people have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, EDS. Um, I have a hypermobility version. Um, and I also have MCAST, Mass Cell Activation Syndrome.

So  when we are also talking about burnout, we have to talk about burnout from the lens of  What are the other elements of me that are contributing to my energy management and mastery? Right? And at that point, I had no clue who I was. First of all, I was just in survival mode. I was just trying to make sure that I was safe.

Everybody, you know, was good and we were moving along.  And, you know, we have those moments in our life where sometimes they're referred to as the dark night of the soul. And I had one of those, and I had these two small children. My husband at the time was in the military and was overseas fighting in a war.

And I am laying there. In the bed, my mom had put the kids to bed and left and the house was quiet  and it, it, it had been building. It was this sense of  worthlessness. Like I am completely useless. My body is useless. I am useless as a mom. I am useless as a human. I wasn't able to work. I had to resign from my job. 

You know, I'd been a hospital administrator. I love my job. You know, there was a lot of things that I was passionate about, but you know, I'd pushed myself so far. For so long that my body just said, okay, the software's killed the hardware. We quit.  Right. And I remember sliding out of my bed that night because I couldn't stand up.

So I kind of slid down onto the hardwood floor and it was, I think it was February. So four was cold and I just laid there face down.  And I just cried. And then I got to where I was just, there were no tears coming out. There was no sound coming out. I was just kind of shaking. And then I just stopped and got really still. 

And I remember thinking,  I'm either going to be here in the morning or I'm not,  and I have to choose.  And it was at that point, and it was in that night that there was this small ray of hope. There was just this little glimmer that said,  you're not meant to live like this. There's something more.  And you're going to find it. 

And that began my journey to burnout restoration. And I am now in year four plus of living burnout free for the first time since I was six years old. And I just turned 50 earlier this month in May. So that's kind of a spectacular thing. Cause I never expected to get this far to be here. And I was celebrating,  I'm celebrating all year.

This is really a big thing for me. 

that's an incredible story and what a journey to have to have gone on. I can totally identify with the idea of putting everybody else's needs before your own to the point where, yeah, you just, you end up with, with nothing left. So to, to have pulled yourself back from that, , is amazing.  , how did you do that? 

Hmm,  very gently,

Mm hmm.,   

without any guidance because, , I guess just maybe from the way that I am wired,  it did not occur to me for many years  to look outside of myself,  everything was very, I've got to figure this out.  And I think a lot of people do that. , a lot of my clients are been trying to figure it out for themselves for a long time too.

,  And so where I actually started were two very  in distinct places.  Number one, , because of my background in science, I said, okay,  I don't know that at this point I was on 15 different medications just so I could stand up and not be the human version of a fainting goat. And I was not nearly as cute or funny. 

Right. So, so at that point I'm like, what's Okay. So  I'm a woman in her early forties with young kids and I am on a lot of medications  and it's a lot of off label. And what is this going to do? If this is what I have to take for long term  and how is that going to impact my body overall? And I was like, this is not where I want to be, right?

This isn't, this isn't the answer. And I thought, okay.  No, I'm smart.  I know. I mean, that was part of the problem. I think I started to hit and hit that early burnout is because, you know, I have an IQ of 138 and they knew it at that time. And so everybody had these expectations of, Oh my goodness, you're so smart.

You're genius. You know, all you could do all this stuff,  but I couldn't,  I could do these things that were complicated for everybody else really, really well. And then I could like tie your shoes. What now? Tie my shoes for me. Tuck my shirt in, right?  So those types of things. So  I sat down and I thought, okay, I don't want to be on these medications for the rest of my life because I know the long term impact and it's going to my quality of life is going to continue to deteriorate.

So I've got to figure this out on a cellular level.  So what can I do? Because everybody starts with this sort of rigid rules and concrete ways that we can change things. And it's always that physiological bucket. How can I change my food? How can I change my water? How can I change my exercise? Right? How can I change my sleep?

Those are the things we usually try to focus on 1st and burnout disrupts your sleep 1st. And it's the last thing to restore to come back online.  And so, you know, of course I was not sleeping well, which makes everything worse. It's sort of like the exacerbation. They get caught in this 22 catch 22 cycle.

So I said, okay, how do I begin on a cellular level? What can I control? Because I felt like I had control over nothing. Everything was happening to me and at me and all this. And I'm just trying to navigate it every day. I was always in this heightened survival mode.  So I said, okay, what can I control? And this is going to feel better.

Cause then I can do something right. Cause we always want to do something to fix that problem. And I thought, okay,  I'm going to  control everything I put in my mouth from the standpoint of what is nourishing my cells.  Where can I make sure that I am effectively navigating my blood sugar was where I started.

Um, because I, I had these really big spikes and drops because I had been told I was hypoglycemic and all this kind of stuff. So I'm like, I'm going to manage my blood sugar essentially.  And so I dove in and I said, okay, I'm going to turn off the glucose and I'm going to turn on the fat energy machine. So I.

Okay. Also discovered at that point, my dad was a celiac, but gee, why wouldn't I have thought I was too? Well, I am. And so I had to cut out all of the wheat, all of the gluten. And in 30 days I was like, Oh my gosh, my joints don't hurt so bad.  And then another 30 days, then I realized, wow, I don't feel so angry and agitated all the time. 

I didn't realize that certain foods were causing some of those emotional.  Experiences. And so all of that just was very gentle. And I was like, I am not doing big. I am not doing like the huge, massive, fast overhaul. I'm just going to do 1 tiny little thing and I'm going to do it for at least 30 days. Or at least two weeks until I feel like I understand how this is affecting me because I put on my science lab coat and I said, I'm just going to collect the data.

I'm going to see what each thing does. And I became my biggest experiment,

Mm 

honestly. And in one medication at a time over a two and a half year period, I got off of all 15  and it was really interesting. And I changed my body.  My, my chemistry just through my food. And then I began to want to move my body, you know, so all of these things, yes, you hear like self care and this kind of stuff, but this was a very different approach.

This was, how is it impacting how I feel?

hmm.

Do I feel? Cause all I wanted to do was feel better. I wanted to feel good because I felt like crap. And most people say that they say, I just want to feel better. And it's like, absolutely. We know, I know that you want to feel better,  but with that being your only GPS point,  and you don't really understand where you are right now, other than this.

Really sucks. And I don't want to be here and this doesn't feel good. Let's give some data, some context to this. And so as I began this journey, the second thing that I did was not just what can I put in my mouth on a cellular level to impact my energy and not even knowing that the word was energy.

Cause I didn't even know I was in burnout at the time. I was just trying to feel better, right?  Cause I wasn't that smart. I was super smart about some stuff, but I was not smart enough to know I was in burnout  and I didn't tell anybody. I was scared. Cause there were moments  that there were moments that I felt like I was losing my mind and I was going crazy.

I was scared. It scared me. It was so bad sometimes because the brain fog was awful. I couldn't remember simple words. Like I remember my kids were. Like being really naughty and they were like all over the place and it not bad But you know just being kids and I was like sit in the thing with the four legs Sit in the thing get in the thing with the four legs and they're like that chair mom And I'm like, yes that chair cuz I couldn't think of the word chair.

The brain fog was so bad, right? so stuff like this happens and So as I started to feel better from a couple of those things I was doing, the next thing was then,  well,  who am I? I have no, I am a 40 plus year old woman.  I was about 42 at the time. I was like, I don't know who I am.  And so I found, I went out, you know, Google, Dr.

Google and a Google search. How do I figure out who I am?  And this 52 journal prompts  thing came up  and I was like, okay, I'm just going to go through these. I'm going to do like one a week or one a day, just pace myself. I'm going to take my time until I've really fleshed out  the question and the answer. 

And I remember one of the first questions was,  what does your ideal day look like? Who's in it? What are you doing? Where are you?  And I went,  I have no idea. I never thought about it.  At 42 years old, I never thought about what would be my ideal day. What would be like the best day?  And so I really started to put some thought into this and I have these different versions and different  iterations of it.

And as I started to think about that, like, where do I want to be? What am I doing?  Who is with me? What does it feel like? What is the experience of just that,  that ideal day? And  I began to start to go, well, I want that.  I want that.  And then there was this one question that said,  what do you like?  And I was like,  I don't really know.

I know a lot of things I don't like. And that's usually where we start. We start with a list of like, this is what I don't like, but con contrast creates clarity. Finding what we don't like gives us options and gives us the opportunity to discover what we do like. Right, because then we have sort of this list that we've created and it was at that point that I was sitting there was drinking a diet coke, right?

Because it's no sugar. I cut out sugar and I've been drinking diet cokes  since about the 2nd or 3rd grade. and I hated them.  This is really fun.  So how I went to a girls, all girls private school and one of the girls in my class, her grandparents owned the local Coca Cola bottling company. And so I am this old y'all when  I was in second, third grade,  Coca Cola came out for diet Coke, came out for the. very first time. And so her grandmother had, you know, somebody from the Coca Cola bottling company deliver to the school for all the girls ice cold diet Coca Colas. 

And of course, everybody gets one and they're all oohing and aahing and oh, this is so wonderful and blah, blah, blah. And I sipped it and I thought this is the worst tasting stuff I have ever put in my mouth. Disgusting, but I wasn't going to go against the social norm. I wasn't going to be different and not like it or just not drink it.

Right. I could have chosen to not drink it and not say a word.  That didn't occur to me because I didn't feel safe. Like I had to drink it and I had to lie about it to say I like it. Right. And so, uh, almost 40 years later, I'm still, I had just bought a case of the stupid stuff. It was in my refrigerator and I'm sitting at home by  myself drinking this nasty thing.

And in that moment I thought, what do I like? Well, I don't like this.  This is gross. I don't like it. I don't know why I have drunk it for so long. I went and poured it in the sink. I took that case and I walked next door and gave it to my neighbor who I know loves the darn things and I have never picked up another one. 

But it was those questions. It was those small little things.  That started to unveil who I am to me. And it started to create space. I started to allow space  for me to be whoever I was.  And to learn to love me because when I started, I was barely even holding 30 seconds of space for myself.  I told myself in a little mirror, I said, all right, I give you 30 seconds and I will just hold space and I will tolerate you.

I  couldn't even look at myself in a full mirror and say, I love you.  I sure can now. I can do it  naked.  

That's very cool. I'm very glad that you can do that now. , so now that we know a little bit more about you and thank you for taking the time to, to kind of take us through that journey and how you pulled yourself back.  And there's so much in there  that I know that our listeners can  learn from and can take from depending on where they are in, in their particular journey.,

  What I like to do on, , on the soapbox every week is to ask my guests what their soapbox is. So the thing that you can't stop talking about that you, , always find yourself in conversations about in random places with random people that keeps you awake at night in a good or a bad way, so what is your soapbox? 

I love this question. This is the one I'm so excited about.  Energy mastery. Understanding. This isn't a conversation that we ever have. We're not taught. This isn't, it's kind of like boundaries growing up. No one talks about it. It's not a conversation that we're having at the dinner table about, you know, what little rule are you putting around the things that nourish you so that you get those met in your life and you're feeling good and energized, right?

Nobody talks.  And ultimately no one talks about what happens when we, we get into this place of survival mode and we get in a level of burnout. And for a lot of us, you know, I'm a burnout researcher. And so over the last three and a half years, my global research, I've identified five different levels.

Five different  states of chronic burnout. And what I also recognized in that is that so many people are stuck in what I call the restoration illusion trap.  So let's just say you take my spicy pepper burnout quiz and it tells you whether you're in burnout or not. Right? So if you're not burning out, we say, Hey, you're doing great.

And here's some additional things to help you really. Supercharge this.  But if you're in burnout, we then collect over eight different areas of impact for burnout. So, Mashlocks, which is considered the gold standard burnout inventory around the globe, only looks at three main areas of impact. We look at over eight,  because it's really important that we drill down and look at something  in its, in its entirety.

And if we're only looking at three elements, poor, are we missing the mark?  And so in that spicy pepper burnout quiz, we're actually diving in and asking you around these eight different impact areas. This includes your sensory system, your communication. We talk about where is this impacting your sleep?

How is this impacting your executive function and cognitive load? So how you're getting things done.  , how you're just feeling in general, your emotional regulation. We look at all of these different elements  because when we don't, and you don't have a way to identify these things, and somebody is only telling you these three areas and you've got these other five or six areas that are just not going well,  we aren't really seeing the full picture.

So what this leads to is somebody may show up and say, And they may classify as a level three cayenne pepper. And at a level three cayenne pepper, you got a good bit of heat happening. And if it's been going on for a while, we experienced something called, you know, adaptation. So this becomes our new set point, right?

I've been here for so long. I don't remember anything different really. Cause our brains just, that's not how they work. Right. And so this is my norm. This is my set point, but you're actually in a level three burnout.  This is where maybe you have a hard time falling asleep, or you fall asleep, but you can't stay asleep,  or you sleep 10 or 12 hours and you wake up and you're still exhausted.  You may have,  you know, you may have noticed, Hey, I could have sworn, you know, back in the day or a couple of years ago or a couple of months ago, this particular task maybe took me 30 minutes. And now it's taken me like an hour, hour and a half. And maybe it's taking more mental energy to kind of work myself up to get motivated enough to even do it. 

And so these are the things that happen around a three.  And what's interesting is that life has always given us challenges, right? Part of life is the nature of life is that we are receiving challenges because there's three different types of stress. And we have. New stress, which is neutral stress. I mean, super, super clever naming.

And that's my guy. Somebody really went out of the box on it, right? So new stress, neutral stress.  Then we have eustress, E U S T R E S S. And that's the good stress. We all need that. It's the positive stress. It's the like, We get a new project or we have a new idea or something we want to work on. And so it's like this positive, like, I want to get this done kind of pressure.

Right. And then we have distress and that's the negative form of stress. That's the kind of stress that. over long term period starts to erode, not just how we're operating, not just our software, but it starts to break down our hardware, our body  and my soapbox. And I get on around this. And the reason this restoration illusion trap is so important is because if you don't know where you are right now, if you have no idea, if your set point is one of these degrees of burnout, and you've been there for so long, you don't know it. 

Then what happens is, and this happens so often, and it happened to me multiple times along this journey,  life throws us some curve balls, things happen. And so distress, things that are, that are very stressful, you know, things that happen with our kids, our family work, those kinds of things that we just money, those things happen.

And so that stress, we don't have the tools and the resources to navigate that stress that's coming in. Because we don't know ourselves. We haven't unveiled what are our nourishment keys. What are the things that I value most? What is most important to me and who am I?  So when we don't know that we don't have the tools to navigate the stress in the way that works best for us so that it doesn't have this impact.

So what happens is that distress continues to add. And so then we slip into a deeper level of burnout. So let's just say we slip into a level four or habanero or, you know, gosh forbid we fall into that, that ghost pepper level five where you're so hot, you're not, and your body starts to shut down on you.

And your brain starts to shut down and you are more disconnected, more disassociative in that state. Right. You know, and, and feeling super depressed or really anxious,  all of those things start to happen. And so as life goes, the cycles change, you know, the pendulum swings, nothing ever stays the same. So maybe something shift.

Some stress decreases. And then we move back down and we think we're in burnout when we're in four or five, because it feels in contrast to where we've been for so long in a three. So when we move back down to our three, we think we're at a burnout  because we feel better, quote unquote.  So my soapbox is. 

You have to know where you are. You really need to understand this and you can't understand it internally because you don't have any reference points. So go take the quiz so you know where you are. And once you know where you are, we can then take the next step, which is let's look at the degree of heat within this. 

And the whole point of this, the whole purpose of this, the reason my feet hit the floor every morning and I spring out of bed and I am so excited to take on the day, to meet new people, to share this information  is because I ask myself and, and my goal to experience in my lifetime is what is possible  when we have this beautiful thriving population, especially of wonderfully wired humans, because I specialize in neurodivergent and disabled humans.

guys. Bye. Bye. What is possible when they are thriving, when we are thriving, what is possible for us as a community and what is possible for us as humanity.  This  was one of the things that hit me. That I really started to discover and this has been within the last year or two because it came with long term restoration What's possible because I didn't know that this place that I have experienced in my life as pot was possible I didn't know the degree and how this is evolved.

Like I hit this place. I was like, oh I didn't know it's possible to feel this good I didn't know it's possible to not like want to lay down every five minutes or to cry every afternoon or to want to throw Things because I'm just so frustrated I I didn't know this place of feeling good, of loving myself, of being energized and having sustainable energy  was even possible.

And I learned new possibilities in how it happens every day. 'cause life still throws me curve balls. I still get stressed. Big stuff happens in my life. But I now have a new tool set. I now have new resources. I now have a new understanding of who I am and what energy mastery really means.  So that I navigate those in a very different way.

And it comes from a place of  compassionate curiosity.  But here's the root of why this is my soapbox.  When you are burned out,  Especially when you were in those higher levels of burnout or when you have been in a chronic cycle of burnout,  human behavior shows up and it doesn't matter what your neurotype is.

And we become very complacent and reactive  and it's something happens. I don't have the energy for this. I don't have the bandwidth for this. You know, we've all said this. I just don't have it in me. I'm just going to take the path of police resistance. I'm just, I'm not going to really, I'm just going to go, I'm just going to do whatever's easy and keep moving. 

Because I don't have it.  And what happens and what happened to me, and I think what happens to so many people, because there is power in regret,  there's power in regret.  And that was, I can look back and go,  Oh my Lord, why did I choose that? Why did I do that? Why did I make that choice? That was so dumb. And the repercussions were horrible and I really suffered. 

Because I didn't slow down. I didn't have the energy, the bandwidth. I was in burnout, so I wasn't making these intentional informed choices. I was responding  And reacting without  really putting the thought into it and the intention of where I wanted to lead my life within my own personal power  and burnout is essentially an erosion of our personal power and our leadership and our authority in our own life. 

And we, I know from me, my personal experience, I can say I made a lot of really crappy decisions. I made a lot of decisions that hurt me, that hurt a lot of people that I loved,  and I regret them tremendously. But I also give myself love, forgiveness, and compassion because I was in such deep burnout and I've been a burnout for so long.

I didn't know any better.  I was doing the best that I could at the time.  And I can only imagine now What it would be like if I can help  millions of people  get to a place where they are making these intentional decisions that are aligned with their highest and best self  that is then nourishing and fueling from a place of personal power and leadership in their own life.

What is this world going to be like? How amazing would that be?  Because other people We are more susceptible to the control of other people's intentions and will when we are not at our best. 

No, it's actually.  Firstly, I need to say that I love the names of the different stages of burnout in your quiz. I think that's,  that's fabulous. It makes me smile. 

Me too. Thank you.  Thank you. 

But also this idea that we have  forgotten what it feels like to thrive, or that we  don't even, like we've never been there. We don't even think that it's possible to  To feel at that, that level of kind of good, for want of a better word, is so powerful and And the way that you described how you would, if you were in a five and you got back to a three, then you'd feel, you'd feel better.

You'd feel great. You'd wake up in the morning and you'd go, everything's going well. But, but actually  the difference between the three and being at the one or the zero and the potential that there is for feeling even better. Um,  It's bonkers that, yeah, that you'd be at a three and go, yeah, no, fine.

Everything's, everything's going all right. I'm taking all the boxes. So  all the potential that we are missing for being.  Vibrant and intentional, and  I was going to say effective, that sounds really mercenary, but just like, yeah, effective human beings to do the things in the world that we want to do. And I think for a lot of my listeners,  they're business owners running, running businesses that they want to be socially conscious.

They want them to do good in the world and they are  trying to think intentionally about, um, how they do better and how they make an impact. And they're doing that in the midst of a huge range of pressures that can feel massively overwhelming. And  I would be, I would be hugely surprised if anybody listening to this was actually at a zero.

Like I reckon we're all at least  three. 

In my global research study, uh, we are showing that 93 percent of the adult population, global population right now is experiencing some degree of burnout.

Oh, my goodness. That's terrifying.

It's highest rate in recorded history and is even higher than during lockdown and COVID.

Wow.  And

Just since January of 2024, I saw an uptick in two areas.  in our research. So  when people were coming in and taking the quiz and they reported never having been in burnout before,  we're registering more, 5 percent more of a level one poblano pepper  from January, just to mid February, early March.  The other area was  we were seeing an uptick  Almost 7 percent in the people who were recategorizing as a ghost pepper level five who had been experiencing a lower degree of spicy pepper within the previous six months. 

why do you

So that's telling. So it's based on the global experience right now.  Economics for one,  , economic stability. So we've had tremendous amount of layoffs.  And within the neurodivergent and disabled population, we also experience over 80 percent unemployment or underemployment. And  I've seen in the last year  when I begin, it's, it's emerging trend that I'm, I cannot say that it would be categorized as an emerging trend, but this is the data that my autistic brain notices  because I'm wired for that. 

And what I've seen over the last year in these layoffs  and in this restructuring and a lot of industries. So from it to finance media and beyond,  it's been really interesting and you've seen a few articles out there. So definitely pay attention. Fast company, Forbes, Harvard business review have talked about this.

And then I've seen some personal data that I started to collect as I was asking some of these questions and recognizing this was happening. And it's  People were being reverse laid off  in the sense that  we may not lay you off yet because if you're disabled or you have told us in some way that you fall under a protected category,  we don't want to get sued.

So we don't feel comfortable directly firing you. So we're going to restructure and we're going to change as we're doing these layoffs to put so much pressure on you that you resign yourself. And not only was I seeing that, have I seen that happening more frequently in the last year?  I've also seen the impact of that in the burnout, that the escalation is happening. 

It's quite scary. 

And think about how you run a business that way,

Yeah. Yeah.

that,  that feels really awful. That does not feel good. 

So in terms of people who are dealing with  Different levels of or varying levels of burnout and I'm going to put the link to your quiz in the show notes and everybody needs to go and take it and find out which, which chili pepper they are. ,  I'll collect the data afterwards.  But.  If you are running a business like that,  and you are dealing with burnout and you're dealing with constant stresses  and like you, as you were talking, telling us your story earlier,  putting your needs behind everybody else and making sure that everybody else is, is kind of dealt with, because, again, I am willing to bet that a huge proportion of the people listening to this broadcast are in that position to varying levels

if you've ever said, I'm just going to power through this and I'll, I'll rest on the other end. You're in the right place.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I would hold up my hand to that wholeheartedly.  And listening to, to you talk about this idea of energy mastery, this, this vision of being in a space where , you feel that you are nourished. You feel that you have the tools that you need to make the decisions that you want to make and to kind of ,  Create the day and create the life that that works for you and that makes you feel like yourself. 

Where do you start? I

 So you do need to take the quiz. You need to know where am I right now? You need to know what degree of heat within that pepper level. If I'm in burnout, if I'm a habanero pepper level four, What is my degree of heat within that pepper? Am I mild so that I may be closer to moving with the right tools and resources moving down the scale? 

Am I slap dab in the middle and I can go either way depending on what tools and resources I have and what happens in my life, right? And if I've got the tools to navigate whatever happens in my life, or am I in a high degree of heat in this pepper level and without the tools and resources, I, the chance for something to really slip me into that next deeper pepper level is, is pretty imminent.

That's the start, but then it begins with the unveiling method, which I created this methodology that takes you through this entire.  Process that I created for myself and then I was like, oh this this works And you know, I am a a passion driven purpose driven business  and I started my business over four years ago Because I lost three people who were close to me One was a childhood friend to suicide in one week and I believe that all of them were in some degree of burnout and it wasn't recognized and And  I thought at that point it was just starting to really kind of figure out that there was something on the other side of burnout.

I was starting to feel better more consistently. And I thought, and at that point I knew it was burnout. So I was like, I think I figured something out  and I don't want to ever lose another person because I almost lost myself. So I don't want to ever lose another person that I care about.  And I don't want to lose, I don't want other people to lose the people that they love because I figured something out and I can help. 

And so that's where the unveiling method came and then it was years of refinement and, and testing. And so it is now this beautiful journey that is very clear. And, and here's the thing.  We get into burnout because we're doing the hard, heavy things that feel really big, that seem overwhelming, that this has, I have to power through this.

I have to push through this. I have to figure it all out. It has to be perfect. I have to feel safe.  And that is not how restoration happens.  And in, in my research, there are the elements I've identified that are the biggest energy depleters, the biggest nourishment key tankers  in our life. And number four on that list is play. 

And so I look at it as how can we make this light? How can this be playful? How can this be fun? And how do we do this in micro ways? So I also have the micro recharge lab. So I teach people, how can you energize in 20 minutes or less? And honestly, it's five minutes or less, but we do some talking. So it takes 20 minutes because this isn't about me telling you, that you've, you've got a five out of 10 on your energy.

And this is how you should be feeling right now because.  That is so not going to be accurate for you. This is me just giving you some guidance and you beginning to lead and identify, well, what do I feel? What does my energy feel like right now? How would I describe this?  You know, do I have some words, where are there some physical experiences?

Are there some signposts, some internal warning signposts that I can, there's 20 top 20 of them. So I got that list for you and we do that in the degree of heat. So yeah. Um, what is it that I'm feeling, right? So it's how can I make this useful? Because we don't always have the words to articulate how crappy we're feeling.  So in the unveiling method, it's about making this an easier process for you. This is about you discovering about you. What is your energy feel like? What are the small things that you can do  and who can you be? Cause it's about shifting who we're being.  Who can I be that allows for ease and flow and light and playfulness? 

How do we get there? Because most of us don't know how to get there. We don't know how to experience it. We know the idea of it, right? We, we get the, we get the, you know,  calisthenics in our mind around what this is,  but we've never truly experienced it. Or we experienced it so long ago in childhood when we ran through the grass and we're rolling down the hill and we were giggling and laughing and we were flying a kite and we weren't thinking about all this stuff. 

And so when we really look at this,  The first steps, the path, the ease, it is about how do I make this easier for myself? I got into this doing all the hard stuff.  How can I get out? Make doing it easy,  doing it light, doing it fun and doing it playful. And I am all about it. 

love

come join, come join me.

Yes. I love that.  I love the idea that it doesn't  Doing this work doesn't have to be hard because the idea of doing something hard after  While you are in that place that is already hard, just feels too much for some people. So I love the way that you reframe that.  If people do want to come and join you, Carol Jean, if they want to come and find you online, or if they want to explore your programs, , obviously we'll put the quiz in the, in the show notes, but, , where else can they go?

, how else can they kind of get in touch with you? 

Oh, I love LinkedIn. So come connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm live on Tuesdays at two o'clock East, East central time. U S uh, that's three o'clock Eastern and come join the conversation. Come be there in the room with myself, every guest that I have every week. We're talking about a different element of energy of burnout mastery of what does this experience feel like?

Cause I always say on my show, you know, we're in our third year. We're, we're.  I think almost  160. We're coming up on 160 and  Over the last three years, I started the podcast because I said, I'm only one flavor of jam. I'm, I'm strawberry and somebody might like raspberry with no seeds. Somebody like, like lemon curd, you know, I might not be their flavor,  but I believe everyone should find their person because belongingness is one of the number two biggest things.

energy depleters. And when we know that we've got somebody that gets us, it energizes us. So I might not be your flavor jam, but if you can tolerate the Southern over here, and you want to come hang out for a little bit, I want to introduce you to the flavor. I want to introduce you to your person because I believe every person needs to have their person.

So join me on the LinkedIn and check me out at Whittington, wellbeing. com. Take the quiz, find out if you're in burnout or not. And if so, what's your pepper level is. And then let's start taking those steps to get you out and let's play. Let's make it light and have fun doing it. 

that sounds fabulous. Everybody needs to go and do that. Thank you so much for chatting with me. It's been absolutely fascinating. I've loved hearing more about you and your story and , and the in depth work that you've done to help other people. So, you know, I really appreciate your time. 

Thanks for having me. I love staying at home with soapbox today.